unreachable
by lakunstlerin
Summary: Actions have consequences. What if Anakin hadn't caught Ventress? The Jedi Who Knew Too Much AU. One-shot. Character death.


**So I got Matthew Stover's _Revenge of the Sith_ from the library, and I kinda fell into a Clone Wars hole, so naturally something had to give.**

 **I promise not all my fics involve death. Someday I'll write a happy fic. Just not today. Feeling kind of eh about this story, but I'll post it anyway since it has nowhere to go. Comments appreciated.**

 **warning: character death/suicide (not planned).**

* * *

 _There is no emotion, there is peace._

" _I'm sorry, Master."_

Guilt envelopes him, heavy like the cloak he wears, leaving an almost tangible aftertaste in the air he flies through. He feels no peace. Only rage fuels his tired mind—and despair, the cry for help pulling him desperately homeward.

 _There is no ignorance, there is knowledge._

He barely feels through the haze of aching pains his body ignores. The Force-aura surrounding him throbs with feelings he can't even start disentangling, not all of them his own. The pain of betrayal, the spikes of fear. He grits his teeth. Above all, the overwhelming disbelief.

 _There is no passion, there is serenity._

" _You can't do this!"_

Jedi aren't meant to be attached. Attachment leads to blindness, to fear, to darkness. But if attachment leads to blindness, then why does he feel like the only one so horribly gifted with sight? Then why hadn't the Jedi Council acted _better_ —fair, impartial, right? The Council...unperturbed as he'd raged below, as she had been ushered away unresistant, numb.

 _There is no chaos, there is harmony._

He can't make sense of it. Not just his own swirling fears, but the bleak feeling unraveling inside. He hadn't realized how much her optimism sustained him, not until it plunged so darkly into an unthinkable abyss of betrayal and hurt. He tries to let go now, but unfortunately, his senses are assaulted at every corner by fresh news about the incident, word of mouth spreading like a wildfire until it all burgeons into one overwhelming wave of public anger and fierce _joy_ that finally, someone was doing something to save the peace, punish the horrible traitors who had murdered innocents—

 _There is no death, there is the Force._

Ahsoka Tano, expelled Padawan of the Jedi Order, guilty of sedition against the Jedi, the Republic, against human sympathy itself, murderer and traitor, condemned to death...

Her trial, her condemnation, _today_ , and he hadn't even been there. The thought sends fresh waves of guilt over him—if he'd just searched longer. Better. Harder. Ventress might still be out there, somewhere, and if he has to search the galaxy's darkest corners, he would, till she has _nowhere_ left to hide.

But the guilt of the present is nothing compared to the fear of the future. Though the first tug of raw helplessness and grief has long since faded, his senses keep bringing whispers, images to his mind unbidden. The battlefield instincts of having a constant presence—however small—to keep track of, sense perpetually, feels now too firmly ingrained for him to tear off. Strange. Attachment is wrong, yet attachment is what should bind Master and apprentice together. Forever, till he is dead and buried and she will carry on. Not the other way around...

Something twists inside him like a snake, a fear he hasn't felt since the wind on his speeder bit desert sand into his face, since a village died on that fateful night. It is the fear that somewhere out there, a lone figure is huddled in the dark, hanging by a thread over an infinite abyss, and he alone can save her.

One more person for him to fail. Not look after enough. Not be strong enough for. Not be protective enough of. She's nearly slipped away too many times by now for him to erase the constant background wariness.

This time, he'll be fast enough. This time, he'll succeed.

Almost unconsciously, his instincts keep him from turning towards the Jedi Temple. All that would happen is that he'd be delayed, set upon. Locked away, arrested for his own good. The Council is wising up to his tactics, after all. Besides, he can never turn to them knowing it was _their_ fault in the first place...

But part of him still wishes for company as he nears the prison headquarters at nearly breakneck speed. It is cold, dark, sharp, the blood-reg flags waving in ominous columns stretching up to the imposing military building—not the serenity and light of the Jedi temple. The serenity that threw her away like nothing.

He hates both.

As he nears the base, the prospect of actually doing something now is enough to kick in his general's instincts, clear some of the dark haze from his mind, bring some sanity to his thoughts as he realizes he does not, in fact, have a plan or even a goal.

He is reverting to his instincts as he always does, and right now, this is the only place the Force is pulling him towards, steady as a black river inside. But is it the Force, or is it himself? Does it matter?

Maybe it would matter when he is caught. _If_ he is caught. That is his plan. Not to get caught. The rest will follow.

He feels the Force settle in him slightly as his resolve deepens. Nearly two years' of battle has hardened his nerves past anxiety—he is only a walking maelstrom now, a conduit that he can control if he so desires. Somehow, he should be the brightest part of this environment, but he only feels like its inky center.

He stands in front of Commander Fox again, and this time, he is ready.

" _You_ _ **will**_ _let me in._ "

His voice is more controlled than he thought it'd be. He gives no indication of force, nothing to attract the attention of the troopers eyeing him as though ready to jump him at a moment's notice—no doubt, they'd been informed—nothing suspicious, only his words, grabbing hold of the Commander's mind and twisting it, fighting against the tenacious determination to follow _orders_ that both hinders him and helps him here as he tries to push it along. _I'm the General. Listen to_ me _._ He grits his teeth slightly as he glares back at the faceless visor, his mind starting to burn with frustration. For an instant, he wants to snap at these men, throw them back and continue, but he can't. He shouldn't.

"Admiral Tarkin's given me clearance. Now step aside," he orders, hoping that the mention of the superior officer will tip the balance on his suggestion.

"I...yes. Affirmative, sir." The Commander finally answers haltingly. "You have access."

Anakin moves, but the guards do too, igniting their vibro-blade tips in unison.

"Sir—" one echoes. "The Admiral ordered _no_ contact with the prisoner—"

"It's alright, trooper," the Commander responds impassively. "Accompany the General."

It isn't in their DNA to actively resist. They file behind Anakin as he heads down the hallways, letting the Force guide him like it had on that fateful night she'd run away—had it only been yesterday, or the day before?

Had it only been a few days since they'd been bantering in the skies, trading wits as they'd held each others' backs against hails of bluster fire, his troops at his side? It feels like an eternity ago.

Her Force signature is worryingly weak, as if she no longer really resides in this building, but the Chosen One hasn't kept a reckless apprentice mostly at his side in one piece for so long without at least _some_ intuition...

He stops outside a cell, peering through the hazy red glare of the ray shield. He knows he'd found what he was looking for.

"Stand guard," he orders the clones abruptly, deactivating the ray shield and pivoting inside too quickly for them to stop him even if they'd wanted to.

Then, he turns his eyes to find his apprentice.

The figure sitting opposite him, her elbows on her knees and her face between her hands, hasn't even shifted at his approach or lifted her head, though between the Force and his sounds she would surely have registered his approach. Every line of her body sags, like a taught rope that has finally snapped.

In the Force, however, she is a star—a small, flickering one, slowly darkening, the very epicenter of this prison, compacting, becoming denser and denser until it collapses into a black hole of nothingness, as though she wishes to vaporize from existence this very moment.

"Ahsoka?" he asks uncertainly. He knows the past few days had been anything but happy, but he at least finds his heart picking up slightly in relief—even a wary joy—at being in the same room again, together. How they were meant to be.

No response except for maybe a slight tightening of her jaw.

"Look, I know—I know what's happened, and things seem bad now," Anakin admits, his brain too weary to fashion this situation into something humorous to lighten a load he can't. "But—we'll figure something out. _I'll_ figure something out, I'll talk to the Jedi Council, I'll _find_ Ventress—" His voice drops an octave, now haunted, quickening, frantic, as his failures threaten to come back to smother him again with the horrible _possibilities_ \- "They'll have to delay, I promise."His voice grows steely at the end. "Ahsoka?"

He reaches out to touch her shoulder, a familiar reassuring gesture he's often unconsciously done in the past, but she jerks back from his touch as if from a burn.

" _No_ ," she spits, wheeling around to face him, her eyes harsh and blue and glaring.

"Ahsoka—"

"Don't you see, it _doesn't matter_!" Her voice rises higher to a fever-pitch, cracking. "The whole world thinks I'm guilty!"

"No, they don't!" Anakin responds vehemently, standing up in turn. "Ahsoka, we can find the real culprit and prove you're innocent, you just have to _trust_ me."

"No," Ahsoka replies bitterly, her voice sinking low as tears begin filling her eyes now. Her words are harsh. "Some things can't be undone."

He hates those words, because they imply that he can't fix everything, as Obi-Wan so often likes to repeat. That he has to leave things up to chance, to the Force. But to leave the lives of his only friends to the pitiless whims of the universe is not his way.

It _shouldn't_ be the Jedi way.

"You know that's not true," he counters, trying to regain his composure, to find the right words, to be the Master he's _supposed_ to be. "You're letting your feelings cloud your judgement. You _can't_ give in to despair."

He's seen what she hadn't. Not so long ago—or was it _so long ago_?—he'd begged and bartered for her life, he'd insisted that there was _always_ hope, and for once the universe had responded, and he is going to _keep_ it that way, with his own two hands if necessary.

Ahsoka simply turns her head away, with something like a wall between them in the Force, shut off and isolated, her doubt so obvious he can almost hear it, and a flash of anger sears through his soul like lightning. He is aching and stretched, he's searched for hours, he's insisted, he's believed despite being the _only_ one, and now she only doubts him, rejects him.

He grimaces and turns away, just preventing himself from snapping out at her in the nick of time and voicing his thoughts— _almost another screwed-up Master mistake_ , a voice inside mocks—but she's already sensed his anger in the Force, and her voice comes more softly.

"Anakin. . ."

Then she stops, pausing suddenly as if startled, fear crossing into her eyes. He's been too preoccupied to sense it first, but now it quickly follows—the sounds of a distant commotion, of distant feet running, shouted orders.

The spike of fear in the Force nearby matches his suddenly pounding heart. He isn't afraid for himself—he can talk himself out of this mess. It's Ahsoka. If he is caught now, he might never see her again, he might not be able to save her—

And that isn't an option—

But neither is running—

His faith in the Jedi Council is evaporating as quickly as his optimism, and as he hesitates, it is already too late.

Commander Fox is shouting outside, with at least an entire squadron of troopers surrounding him, weapons bristling, ready to kill.

"General Skywalker! General _Skywalker!_ Leave the prisoner and stand down, now."

Something about the clicking of the barrels of the blasters most likely set to lethal force helps clear Anakin's mind, makes everything _simpler_ , wipes his mind free of distractions as only one thought overrides everything else, the principle he's always fallen back on in every fight when things became ugly:

He is the Master. His job is to _protect._ Everything else is secondary.

"Stay back," he orders Ahsoka roughly, pushing her behind him. "I'll handle this."

"No, Master, _don't_ —"

The Force flows through him as he stares back at the men aiming for him, lets him feel the tension of their fingers on the triggers, the fear behind him that is Ahsoka, the distant burning sun that is the Jedi Temple, and, nearing, some very fast-approaching pinpoints of light indeed—though what Jedi have been sent to retrieve him, he can't guess. He truly is in deep, deep trouble.

"Stand down, troopers. We don't want any trouble, I promise. Lower your weapons."

"Negative, General. You're under arrest for forcing access to a secured prisoner whom the Admiral has ordered to be terminated. Step _aside_."

And let them kill Ahsoka?

"That's _never_ going to happen, Commander," Anakin returns through gritted teeth, his mind already formulating a plan as his insides lurch to the worst case scenario, the best way for him to fight his way through the squadron without getting Ahsoka hurt, the fastest way to run, to get as _far_ away from here as possible, because if she is supposed to die, then he no longer feels guilty about any of this, his fingers instinctively reaching for his lightsaber—

—just as his senses suddenly scream _danger, danger_ and every attentive mind around him suddenly snaps its focus, just as his reflexes respond a fraction too late in his moment of inattention—

and not finding it.

 _She_ is holding the lightsaber, but not at him. She is holding the hilt to her own neck, backed up against the wall, out of his reach, her fingers trembling on its metal surface, and a truly desperate, feral look in her eyes as she eyes the clones aiming at her through Anakin.

" _W_ _hat are you_ doing _?_ " Anakin yells harshly, reaching out for her but not daring to grab for it, his stomach suddenly dropping into his shoes, fear freezing the moment.

" _Stay away from me!_ " she screams, glaring indiscriminately past him at the clones, her voice cracking with the strain. Waves and waves of concentrated emotion are suddenly roiling off her, days' worth of suppressed anxiety, desperation, despair, and now the tipping point, Anakin caught in the middle, one hand flung out to ward off the clones should they make a move, one hand stretching towards her, and he himself straining with the pressure to know when either will attack, a sudden awful realization leaking into him, that she would rather die in battle than any planned execution at the hands of those she once called friends—

"Stand down, Commander Tano! Stand _down_!"

" _NO!"_ she screams back, a desperate fire reflected in her eyes as her resolve burns through the Force, and Anakin feels the tension tighten on their triggers at the same moment as he feels her resolve snap.

He sends a burst of power through the Force, throwing the men back at the same moment as he feels the lightsaber ignite—

at the same moment as he flings himself forward, desperately batting it aside with the Force, the hilt twisting awry in her hands—

at the same moment as a blue-white flame flares through the night of the cell, flashing for a moment like lightning—

at the same moment as an intolerably hot pain burns through his sternum, his ribs, his lungs, his _breath_ —

at the same moment as he screams, the same fear burned through his throat as he'd leaned over Obi-Wan's lifeless body ripping through him—

at the same moment as Ahsoka collapsed, the blade aimed for her throat having sliced through her entire side instead.

" _AHSOKA!"_

Her frame hangs limp as he grabs her shoulders, but her eyes still flicker open slightly, her face a grimacing mask of pain from his movements, wave after wave of pain assaulting him through the bond he's left open...

He doesn't recall himself yelling for a medic, or the roar of chaos around him, or the troops filling the cell. He doesn't recall himself grabbing her wrist, holding it tight. He doesn't even recall himself speaking, lying reassurances honed by two years of war finding their way off his tongue inadvertently.

"Hey, Snips, just hang on—we'll get you out of this, okay?"

Pretend they are on a battlefield, that it's just blasterfire ringing between his ears, that it's just a stray shot they can easily patch up.

Her voice is only a charred cough. " 'M s-s-sorry, M-m-mast-te-r-r-" At the last, however, the faintest smile lifts the corners of her lips, the old gleam in her eyes shining through again for a moment as she strains her fingers to brush his shoulderplate. "Y-y-y..ou...s-s-sa-a-fe…"

Pretend she's about to say more, about to drop some quip about needing someone to watch his back.

At the same moment as he feels the dying star flare more brightly than ever—then slip away forever, melting away to somewhere far away, somewhere beyond his reach, as her eyes turn vague and empty, the body a shell left behind for him to shake with calls that have no meaning anymore. "Ahsoka... _Ahsoka_..."

Anakin doesn't recall lifting his body from the cold durasteel floor, nor does he remember his lightsaber forgotten in a corner. He feels nothing, at least not until someone in the haze tries to touch him—or get near Ahsoka, he can't tell, and all that matters is that that _cannot_ happen. Someone is screaming in rage somewhere—maybe it's him. It doesn't matter.

All that _does_ matter is that the real killers are cowering in fear of him, all that he feels is the red mist that descends on his mind when the familiar face presiding over it all enters his frame of vision, and the sudden explosion of anger from within, his rage an inferno to be reckoned with.

" _Murderer_ _—!_ "

Admiral Tarkin is hanging in the air, choking out his life, and this is _good_.

This is what he _deserves_ —

This is _justice_ —

He does not recall the shouts behind him or the click of the trigger—he can't feel pain or regret or anything except the air crushed out from beneath his clenched fingers—and he doesn't register the blue flash till it lights up his vision and finally, finally punches him out into the escaping, oblivious, relieving dark. At _last_.

* * *

This is what it feels like to wake up as Anakin Skywalker, on the brink of unconsciousness at the twilight of the Clone Wars:

He wakes up to the cold steel beneath his face, and a blazing emptiness within, and he remembers that he has _failed._

Again.

 _Ahsoka_.

And not only has he failed, but he has failed the person he'd been assigned to _protect_ , the person he'd been responsible to _keep_ , the person who had _trusted_ him, who'd _been_ entrusted to him—

He has failed, and lost the only good thing the war has ever given him.

Pushing himself up from the cold bench, he realizes he's in another cell, though not the same one he left.

Obi-Wan is standing across from him, his arms folded and expression implacable, though Anakin senses a great and heavy weariness in the air between them. Faintly, though, because his own ache inside is threatening to eclipse all that and tear him apart. The floor of the cell is empty—no blood, no stains, no lightsaber, and no Ahsoka—and he feels a flaring panic.

"Where's Ahsoka?" Anakin demands, his eyes fixed on something, anything, on the wall behind Obi-Wan. Internally, he _dares_ him to answer with a platitude. He doesn't know what he'll do if Obi-Wan does.

"I...I'm not sure," Obi-Wan admits lowly. "They moved her body somewhere else."

Her body. Not her, of course. She's somewhere he can't reach. Or feel. Then why does it have to _hurt_ so bad?

The silence stretches out impossibly long between them for a moment.

"The Jedi Council looked over security footage and concluded that you didn't have any traitorous intentions, the situation simply got...out of hand. Admiral Tarkin is willing to overlook your—mistake in the moment." Obi-Wan's voice is so _hatefully_ calm, and Anakin can't help but glare up at him after a moment, his fists clenching. He hasn't expected sympathy, but if Obi-Wan is just going to _stand_ there and talk to him when Ahsoka could be anywhere, alone, abandoned Force knows where—his stomach starts clenching—

"What am I supposed to be, relieved?" he sneers, his voice so harsh it almost drips with poison—the anger bubbling up within him even now, the bleakness threatening to consume. "Wouldn't want the Council to get any _wrong ideas…_ "

"Anakin, the Council didn't want this—"

" _Don't talk to me about the Council!_ " Anakin roars, flying to his feet in a fury, his eyes flashing almost murderously. Then he turns away, shaking with anger, hitting his real hand against the steel wall just to keep himself from going at Obi-Wan instead. "You were on the Council, and you did _nothing_! You _let_ them make this happen, you _didn't even try—"_

"You never even came to me, you never gave me the option," Obi-Wan returns, his voice still even but his facade of calm gone. He sounds grieved. More grieved than Anakin might ever have felt his Master to feel, and not just for himself, but right now he's too angry to register that, except to relish it because Obi-Wan _should_ feel guilty, he _should_ , even if only to numb the guilt threatening to cut off his own breath—

"I don't want to talk to you," Anakin hisses at the wall through gritted teeth. "Leave, or let me out."

"You can go whenever you feel well enough, but Anakin…" Obi-Wan stands between him and the door to freedom. "You need to think through what's happened. I know you two were close, but blaming yourself won't fix anything."

"Stop—talking," Anakin growls, advancing towards him with a glare, heading for the door.

"Guilt isn't what Ahsoka would have wanted."

He wants to scream at Obi-Wan to shut up, _shut the hell up_ , but Jedi protocol has robbed him of even this expression of his emotions, so all that comes out is a strangled cry of fury.

" _I said stop!_ "

"Anakin, I know how you feel," Obi-Wan pleads, "but these feelings don't have to control you."

"You— _you don't know how I feel_ ," Anakin manages haltingly, his voice shaking with rage. "You don't. And thanks to the Council, I'll never know _what_ Ahsoka would have wanted. So stay _away_ from me."

His mind is too numb at this point to be shocked at the words he's hurling at his former Master, and he is too angry now—and too deep in trouble—to care about Jedi protocol. The Jedi have abandoned him anyway.

Or has he abandoned them, at this point?

"She was innocent, and you _killed_ her."

He half-stumbles, half-runs away from the cell while he can, guards trailing him as if to make sure he isn't causing trouble on the way, but he doesn't care. Once he reaches the outside he simply runs, the pounding of the Force in his screaming head sustaining his vast leaping arcs of motion.

All he wants to do is get away from Obi-Wan, but his Master's worried presence clings to him like the plague.

All he wants to do is get away from the consuming fire tearing through him, but he can't, because it is in his very bones.

Because while all the anger in his heart screams that it _was_ the Jedi Council, it _was_ Obi-Wan, it _was_ Ventress, it _was_ Tarkin, it _was_ everyone else, it can't drown out the cold whisper of guilt seeping through him, that it was just _him_. Just all his fault.

Why couldn't he have been a better Master? Why couldn't he have found the real criminal in time, why couldn't he have kept Ahsoka from ever coming, why couldn't he have _sensed_ it, why couldn't he have grabbed the blade in time…

His fault, his fault, his fault…

* * *

Exiled from the Temple, her body never found its way back there. In any case, the military would have been unlikely to allow it. But through some back-alley manipulation and some helpfully wealthy third agents, Padmé—with the help of Bail and some other senators who'd vouched for Ahsoka's innocence—managed to obtain her body.

They had to transport it secretly, for fear of public outrage.

Deep inside, Anakin was glad Padmé's servants could arrange things first. It had been three days since Ahsoka's death when he first saw her again, and despite the skillful attendances, he'd been on the battlefield far too long not to recognize the unmistakable shadow of death blighting her. He swallowed back bile, wishing he could simply scrape it all off her, peel back the shadow till she woke back up again without that unmendable scar of ash on her chest or without the dark stains of bruises coloring her from wherever her body been placed too long before, unmoved. Maybe Jedi just weren't meant to last very long after death, intended to join the Force in flames without any care for appearances. Or maybe he just wasn't good enough at focusing on how peaceful she must look now, wasn't _good_ enough not to be sickened at the unnatural repose of eternity.

What was he if he wasn't strong enough to look at her, dropping his gaze to the floor, because maybe if he didn't look, it could all just be a visit to the hospital wing instead and she would wake up again in a few hours from some injury she'd acquired despite his exasperated efforts to the contrary. Wrapping his cloak around himself a little more tightly, he rested his fingers on hers lightly, touch the only reassurance that there was still anything there at all. Did it matter?

( _I'm sorry._

I _wasn't_ strong _enough to save you_...)

They cremated her privately, as close to a Jedi ceremony as possible, except that it felt both more peaceful without all the imposing cloaked figures and tiresome facades of formality—and yet simultaneously more grievous, that the hero who'd been celebrated and loved by so many now had to suffer the indignity of simply being quietly swept away as ashes. Forgotten. Ignored. Muted.

Anakin didn't invite Obi-Wan, but somehow Padmé had done it for him, and he supposed that, later, he would thank her. Later. Much later. The one and only thing that kept him from hurling himself on Obi-Wan then and there because _She was innocent_ , _You did nothing_ , _You never helped me_ , because _I saved your body in case you don't remember,_ because I _mourned you and you betrayed me_ , was the burning body in between them and the innate knowledge that Ahsoka's spirit would probably reanimate her flaming arm to strangle him if he and Obi-Wan started a duel over her body. The thought almost made him want to laugh, but that twisting sensation in his mouth really only brought him closer to weeping.

After the funeral, Anakin kept her Padawan braid of delicate silka beads. At first he kept it on his belt as a kind of talisman, but he stopped almost immediately—despite its virtual weightlessness, it seemed to drag too much, remind him every time there was a pause in his briefings and he looked to the side to remember afresh who wasn't there to crack a well-placed comment. Besides, it reminded him too much of the bounty hunters he had known—and hated.

But the briefings continued anyway. The war, the fronts, the victories and defeats, they all carried on _anyway_ , never caring someone was missing.

In time, the unbridled anger only haunted his nightmares, but the fear never left. The fear that someday, somewhere, what had once been a list of four—what had now become two—would drop to none.

He still had Obi-Wan, but despite the warmth Anakin knew lay somewhere beneath, Obi-Wan had never been quite as relatable, quite as eager to plunge headlong into his recklessness, whereas Ahsoka had usually been ahead. With Ahsoka gone, Anakin felt like he had simply lost some essential part to the machinery that had made them all flow more smoothly. No one was there anymore to lighten the load when long chasms of heaviness lay between Obi-Wan and him, and the war had only increased those. No one who could bridge them when they butted heads, no one to care about them both. They'd been a pair before Ahsoka and they'd continue to be so after, but something had gone, never to return.

In time, he placed the braid somewhere and forgot it entirely.

In time, the Hero Without Fear realized that he couldn't remember the last time he'd cried. Or laughed, or smiled, or hugged someone. The last was something he hadn't even realized he missed till he found himself on the first weeks-long mission away from Padmé and then he remembered there had only been two people in the entire universe that he hugged, and Obi-Wan was certainly not the other one. They still exchanged their usual witticisms, but something lacked. The lightheartedness had flown. Or maybe it had been murdered and burned to ash.

In time, Anakin Skywalker found he couldn't remember the last time he'd been genuinely happy or genuinely sad. But that didn't matter. Emotions were only a weakness in war, anyway.

All that mattered to him now was ensuring the war could not— _would not_ —rob him of the small handful of people he still held dear.

* * *

( _Ahsoka, I am so sorry._

 _For what?_

 _For letting you go, for letting you get taken...It was my fault._

 _No, Master, it wasn't your fault._

 _I should have paid more attention, I should have tried harder_ —

 _You_ already _did everything you could. Everything you had to do._ )


End file.
